Well, it's back to pounding the trusty old typewriter once more. But, before we proceed further, let me first reproduce a little note I have sent to all who stood by us during the hustings. Like all mailing lists, mine is not complete. And so, to those who may not have received my personal missive, please accept this indirectly:

Three days before the ballot, a friend asked : "So how has the campaign been?" He must have expected a telling of how the gladhanding and backslapping had thus so far been. Instead, I replied without hesitation that, if only for the experience of having rediscovering Baguio once more, the whole exercise was worth it. "I have seen Baguio yet again," I said.

Indeed I have. In 45 days we managed to touch the remotest corners of the city, its deep reaches and mountain tops. In all those were humble and great settlements of people, Baguio folk all, who always amazed us by their diversity and commonality. As different as they were (are) in ethnic or geographic origins, financial or social status, religious or political affiliations, we saw how they are all bound by the drive to survive and prosper in this still fair city.

Be it the sidewalk vendor, the jobless drunk, the itinerant laborer, the wage earner or someone similar financially, or others more upscale, the Baguio resident made it clear that the campaign and elections were but a tick in his/her life. And yet, the seized each chance to demand more than the usual platitudes and promises from the poles. But, more of that later.

The Baguio we've seen in the past month and a half has several layers and divisions to it. On the surface is the apparently physical. That is no simple matter in itself. What struck me immediately is how the hill station of 50,000 souls, planned by the American architect Daniel Burnham almost a hundred years ago, has long been no more.

Where have I been? you ask, and then add, That's been gone for half a century now. True, but it takes a real and visceral re-acquaintance with the city to take it all in.

Whole watersheds and reservations have been built over with big and small, shanty-like and great buildings that make one react with sadness and grudging admiration. Who would have thought . . . .

And the roads. Narrow and twisting, up and down, like so many unplanned arteries conducting life to and from wherever. If 35 years ago I wrote that the city I knew as a child in the fifties and sixties just, in the words of novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, growed and growed, Baguio has since then more amazingly growed and growed even more. One is struck almost speechless by the lack of logic and planning to it all.

A mechanic might bang away next door to a sleepy neighbor, a bakeshop hums busily in a converted garage right across the street from the ubiquitous sari-sari store. Or it might be an enterprising roasted fish and meat vendor smokily catering to a packed neighorhood. Whatever, you name it, you've got it. Everything, and most likely just a few steps away from the neighborhood mansion/s fenced off, for sure, and boasting of the latest car model. To be sure also, the affluent have their ghettos, fenced high to keep out the rest of the world but still and already beleaguered by the reality of uncontrolled urban sprawl. Even the gathered hovels of the poor are likely to near a high-rise building, gleaming with tiles, huge windows and the latest in aluminum and chrome fixtures, rising in their midst. Katas ng Saudi (fruit of hard labor in Saudi Arabia or some such other in its declaration, prompting envious or hopeful dreams from the next doors.

That's just at the outskirts. Move closer to the center of town and the jumble grows. There is where one finds hardly a national, city or barangay road that has not been choked to the gills. Road expansion is no option. And yet, construction of buildings continue no end. Each vacant nook is destined to soon house the ubiquitous corner store or additional room for a growing family.

Be careful now if you have to locate someone in the press of buildings. You'll probably have to quickly turn into an alley (concrete, mind you) and navigate slowly, asking for directions all the way, until you get there.

That's just for starters.